The Border

by Robert McCammon

  He had screwed women who needed to have bags over their heads. At least this one—this pretend woman—was beautiful and changed her skin and hair and eyes and always made him come like a champ. She liked him. What was so bad about that?

  He would think that way until she sent him back, and then the reality would hit him and he would go into his ant farm house, throw up in his ant farm toilet, strip off the clothes that always smelled a little burnt and crawl into a corner. He would stay there, hollow-eyed and shivering as if from the most terrible nightmare, until Regina said Get up, you pig. Or something worse.

  “My Jefferson?”

  He was lying naked on his back on the rumpled bed. His eyes had been closed. Now he opened them to the dim candlelight. She was standing beside the bed, dressed again in her elegant gown of gold and black. Her face was a pool of shadows, but he could see her eyes glinting. Maybe he imagined it, but the pupils seemed to be blood-red. He thought that her disguise was beginning to melt.

  “For you we have a task,” she said.

  He lay still, listening, yet too weak and drained to move.

  “There has been…” She paused, rapidly searching through what she knew of his language. “An incident,” she went on. “Four of your hours ago.”

  Was she taller than before? Larger? A looming presence that was as hard and cold as the darkness of the universe? All those, it seemed. And her voice…many voices in one, many registers and echoes, many ghosts upon ghosts.

  “We require you,” she said, “to help us.” When he didn’t respond, the voices asked sharply, “Hearing us?”

  “Yes,” he answered, newly unnerved. And again, so she—it—knew he was paying attention, though he did not want to look at her. “Yes, I am.”

  “What you would call a boy has…disturbed us. He has aided our enemy. We wish to know more about this boy. You will find him and bring him back to us.”

  “What?” Jefferson sat up, still groggy but clear-headed enough to process what she was saying. Her eyes with their red pupils—slit-shaped, now—seemed to hang in the dark over a large and strangely misshapen body in a gown that had changed dimensions to fit the form, and he felt the stirrings of dread and terror in the roots of his guts. He had started sweating; he had to look away again. “A boy? What boy?”

  “Our questions must be answered,” came the reply, in many octaves. “He is with others of your kind. They protect him. You are a…” Again, there was a pause while she searched. “Persuader,” she said. “Grow their trust.”

  Gain their trust, he thought.

  “Yes,” she said. “Exactly that.”

  “I don’t…I don’t know…what you’re—”

  “You do know. Penetrate their protection. Reach this boy. Put your hands upon him and bring him back to us.”

  “I…can’t…listen…listen…why can’t you do it, if he’s so important?”

  “This needs,” she replied, “the human touch. We would be…how would you say…exposed. My Jefferson, you are very good at what you do. You are very…” A pause of a few seconds, searching. “Skilled. Put your hands upon him, flesh to flesh. Then you will bring him back to us.”

  “Bring him back to you? How can I do that?”

  “We will manage the journey. My Jefferson, how you tremble! Be not feared, we will watch over you.”

  “How?” He shook his head, defying the hurtful device buried in the back of his neck. “I can’t do this! You’re saying…you want to send me out there? Out in that war?”

  Did she sigh, as if with human exasperation? Her voices were cold when she replied. “We require the boy. We require you to bring him to us. You will have protection. One of our own, and one of yours. This male has been…” Once more the search of language. “Modified. He will react to a certain level of threat. You need not worry yourself over this. Am I not speaking well?”

  “Yes,” he said, as he always did when she asked this question. He could not look at her; he was too afraid of seeing some part of what she might truly be under the disguise.

  “The boy,” she continued, “is in a place called Col O Raydo. Do you know this place?”

  “Colorado,” he corrected her. “Listen…no…please, I can’t—”

  “You can and you will. We have given you much, my Jefferson. Much. And much given can be much taken away. You will be removed from this place and sent to find the boy. It will be up to you to carry out our command.” She was silent for a moment, and then the voices said, “Our wish. Once this is done, you may go home and all will be well.”

  Jefferson almost laughed at that one, but what came out was more of a choked gasp. “All will never be well,” he managed to say.

  “We intend to win this conflict.” The Gorgon’s face was shadowed in the candlelight, her voices rising and falling. “We will be beneficent rulers. But now…we need the boy, and you must sleep for a time.”

  Jefferson was aware that the thing at the nape of his neck had begun a soft throbbing. It was like having his neck and shoulders rubbed by warm hands, and the sensation began to move down his back and along his arms, down his spine, into his hips and his legs.

  “Sleep,” said the Gorgon. And Jefferson darted a glance up into where the face must be but saw only a black hole above the shimmering gown. “Sleep,” urged a thousand voices. The comforting warmth of the implant soothed him, lulled him, filled his head with the memory of the beauty this female creature had been a short while ago. He felt sleep coming upon him and he couldn’t fight it; he didn’t want to fight it. He lay down upon the bed of this fictitious French mansion room again, stretched himself out and closed his eyes, and breathing deeply and steadily the last thing he heard her say—and maybe this was spoken in his mind directly from hers—was:

  You will know the boy when you find him, my Jefferson. Now sleep in peace. You have earned it.

  THIRTEEN.

  “OH,” OLIVIA WHISPERED, AND IN THAT SOFT, TERRIBLE SOUND was the noise of a world falling to pieces.

  The smoky light of a weak sunrise revealed all. It was disaster upon disaster. It was fire and dust and death. It was a massive dead reptile in the living room, and no one could take it out to the garbage. As the wounded continued to stumble out and the dead were carried out, Olivia sat down on the cracked parking lot pavement almost in the shadow of the crashed Gorgon craft, and she put her hands to her face and wanted to cry, wanted to let everything go, but Ethan was still with her and so she did not because she was still the leader of this wreckage. Ethan had not left her side, and he was standing nearby watching bloody and dust-covered figures emerge from the murk.

  Ethan had seen a few Cypher soldiers still moving about. He knew there was another Gorgon up in the complex somewhere, probably hidden low in the ruins, and the Cyphers were not going to leave until they’d destroyed the creature. He was dusty and tired and his damp clothes smelled of Gorgon-reek. Already the craft was losing its markings, the colors fading into a grim, grayish cast. In a few days, the odor of rot would be unbearable. Even so, tonight the Gray Men might come looking for meat and even a dead alien ship might do for a feast. He shuddered at the thought of that, and at the memory of what his brief glimpse of the Gorgon had been.

  He had blown the thing up. Completely destroyed it, just by wanting it to happen. His hand was back to normal, his arm, his brain, everything. Back to normal. But he was thinking that normal for him was far different than for anyone else who had survived that crash. He thought he remembered seeing what looked like fiery wasps or burning bullets striking the Gorgon and tearing the thing to shreds. And that recoil, knocking him down as if he’d actually fired a wickedly powerful rifle. He examined the palm of his right hand again, as he had several times already. Nothing there but the lines of fate.

  And then Ethan let himself think it, and let it sink deep.

  I am not just a boy. JayDee is right. I’m something different.

  Something…but not totally human anymore.

  Survivors
were still emerging from the ruins. A few of them, bloodied and battered, stood around Olivia waiting for her to speak, to take control, to make Panther Ridge a secure fortress again, but she could not, and so they passed on. The wooden door covered with metal plates was opened, and people began to leave. Some refused, even as they were urged on by friends or loved ones; dazed and hopeless, they sat down on the ground and could not be moved. An occasional shot was fired up in the remaining apartments, but whether someone was shooting at Cypher soldiers or the slithering Gorgon or taking their own lives was unknown.

  “Oh my God! Olivia!” A figure wearing a blood-spattered white t-shirt and khaki trousers came hobbling toward Olivia and Ethan. John Douglas had found a rusted length of rebar and was maintaining a precarious balance on a sprained right ankle. He had a few bumps and bruises, but otherwise he was all right. The blood on his shirt had come from others he’d helped out of the ruins. He had escaped death by going out his front door to watch the show of alien fireworks, had seen the ship coming down, and with a shout of warning to anyone who could hear, he’d thought to get into the hospital for whatever he could grab. The door was chained and padlocked, as usual after dark. The ship seemed to be coming right at him. There was no time to get the key. Other people were already running past him. A collision with Paul Edson had twisted his ankle, but Paul had helped him get clear of the crash. “Jesus,” he said to Olivia, his voice hoarse and harsh. “I thought you were likely dead!” His swollen eyes went to Ethan. “You,” he said, and maybe there was a hint of accusation in it. But then he took a long breath to regain his composure and his focus, and he asked, “You all right?”

  “Yes sir,” Ethan answered. The nail-puncture wound at the back of his thigh was nothing, not compared to the wounds he’d seen on people coming out of the ruins…and there were eleven dead bodies covered with bloody sheets and blankets lying about twenty feet away.

  “John!” said Olivia, as if she’d just recognized him. “I was trying to find Vincent. He was calling for me. I heard him calling…but I couldn’t find him. Did you hear him?”

  JayDee glanced quickly at Ethan and then back to the woman. “No, Olivia, I didn’t.”

  “Ethan was with me,” she explained, her voice steady and earnest but her eyes sunken and wild. “He took care of me. I think…there was something bad up in there. Something…” She struggled to find meaning. “Bad,” she repeated. “I think Ethan…kept it away from me.”

  “A Gorgon from the ship,” Ethan told the doctor. “Up in the ruins.”

  “You kept it away from her? How?”

  It was time to tell the truth, no matter how incredible it might sound. When Ethan spoke, he stared directly into the doctor’s eyes, and he spoke like a man instead of a boy. “I killed it. I tore it to pieces.” He followed that up with, “I wanted it to be destroyed, and it was. But there’s another one up there somewhere. The Cyphers are looking for it. I wouldn’t want to see one of those again.”

  JayDee gave no reply. His face was pallid except for a purple bruise on his chin where someone’s elbow had hit him in the confusion of escape. “Well,” he managed to say, “I’ve never seen one, and I sure as hell don’t want to. Spare me any more details, won’t you?”

  Ethan nodded, and that seemed to close the subject.

  Someone suddenly moved past Ethan and sat down beside Olivia, hugging her and then beginning to sob. It was the young blonde girl with the eyepatch that Ethan had seen lying on the ground, studying the stars last night. He saw now that the stick-on rhinestones formed a star on her eyepatch. It was, he thought, an effort at making the best of a bad thing. An eyepatch as a fashion statement, or a statement of attitude. Her long blonde hair and her face were dirty with dust and smoke. She was wearing jeans, a dark red blouse and blue Nikes that were all the worse for wear but maybe as clean as any clothes Ethan had seen on anyone so far. As the girl hugged Olivia and continued to cry, Olivia sobbed a little bit too and then she got herself under control; she put her arms around the girl and asked in a voice that was nearly strong, “Nikki, are you hurt?”

  The girl shook her head, her face buried against Olivia’s shoulder.

  “All right,” Olivia said. “That’s good.” She gently stroked the girl’s hair, her own eyes reddened by tears. “We’re going to get out of this,” she said. “We’re not done yet.”

  Ethan took stock of the apartment complex, while JayDee hobbled over to give whatever aid he could to a bloodied Hispanic couple who was being helped along the road toward them. A little boy about seven or eight was holding onto his mother’s hand. The father had suffered a gash across his face, his hair whitened by dust. Ethan said quietly, “We have to leave here. We have to get out before dark.”

  “Just where are we going to go?”

  It had been spoken by the girl with the eyepatch. She was staring up at Ethan as if she thought he was insane. “Who are you?” she asked sharply. Then: “Wait…wait. You’re the boy they brought in a few days ago. Your name is…Ethan?”

  “Yeah. Ethan Gaines. Well…” He shrugged. “It’s a made-up name. I can’t remember my real one.” He tried to find the semblance of a smile, but could not.

  “I was a sophomore at the high school,” she replied. “How’d you pick that name?”

  “Just did. Saw the sign, I guess. As good as any. You’re Nikki…what?”

  “Stanwick.” Her good eye, though bloodshot from dust and smoke, was chocolate brown.

  “Where are your folks?”

  “Both dead,” she answered, without emotion. Ethan figured it had happened in the early days. “My older sister, too.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too. How about yours?” It was asked matter-of-factly, as if they were discussing brands of sneakers. It had become a hard world, Ethan thought, and those who survived had seen and endured much. If they weren’t hard by now, they would have already died.

  “I can’t remember that, either.” Ethan noted a scar just above her eyepatch and several small scars on her cheeks. A deeper scar on her chin ran up to just beneath her lower lip.

  “Nikki’s been with us a long time,” Olivia said. “She came in that first summer. I need to stand up. Can you help me?”

  Both Ethan and Nikki helped Olivia to her feet. Olivia wavered a little bit, and Ethan was ready if she fell, but she held herself steady. “Thank you,” the woman said. She saw a group of six people walking down the road in their direction, two of them nearly carrying a third. She recognized among them Joel Schuster, Hannah Grimes, Gary Roosa, and…

  “Dear God,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “There’s Dave!”

  Ethan’s heart gave a jump. Dave McKane was one of those supporting a thin elderly man with a white beard and long white hair braided into a ponytail. Dave was dusty and disheveled but he looked like he’d come through the catastrophe intact; he was wearing his jeans, a black t-shirt torn almost to tatters and his usual dark blue baseball cap. His brown beard edged with gray was made more gray by dust. He had his Uzi in its holster at his side and, around his waist, the holster with the .357 Magnum in it. His face was grim and there was a bloody cut across the bridge of his nose. He saw Olivia, Ethan, Nikki Stanwick, and JayDee and nothing about his face changed; he gave them a nod of recognition and said in a husky voice, “Let’s set Billy down here. JayDee, I think his right leg’s broken. How about you?”

  “Twisted ankle. Nothing much.” JayDee shrugged, but in truth his ankle hurt like blazes. “Billy, how’re you feeling?”

  “Like shit on a cracker,” the old man said through gritted teeth. “Fellas with broke legs usually don’t feel so good. Don’t need a doc to know that. Ow, Jesus…be careful with my old ass!”

  Olivia hugged Dave and wound up squeezing him so hard he gave a grunt of pain. Dust puffed off him in the embrace. “Oh my God, I thought you were dead!”

  “I might’ve been,” he said, returning the hug but not so firmly in respect of her bones. “I was
sitting on my balcony, thinking. I saw the spheres, and then I heard that thing plowing in and getting louder and louder. I had time to get my guns and then I jumped. After that, I don’t know what happened. I do remember running like a jack rabbit.” His eyes found Ethan. He would not tell Ethan that he’d jumped not from his own balcony but from Ethan’s after he’d kicked the door open to try to get the boy out. He stared darkly at the row of bodies under the sheets and blankets. “Any idea how many?”

  “No idea yet,” she said. “But many.”

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” Billy Bancroft had been lowered to the grass and was fuming as the fingers of a gnarled hand felt along his injured leg. “Seventy-six years old and I never had a fuckin’ broken bone in my life!” His eyes, bright blue, turned upon the row of corpses. He was silent for awhile, and then he said, speaking to everyone and no one in particular, “Jake Keller in there anywhere? Joel, take a look for me, will you?”

  “I’ll do it,” Dave offered. He went about the task quickly and efficiently. The third body was particularly bad, and the fifth was worse. The ninth body was…“Jake’s here.”

  “Damn it.” Billy’s voice was tight. “Little bastard got away owin’ me fifty dollars from our last poker game. Well,” he said, “rest in peace. Cheater.”

  “We can’t stay here,” Ethan said, and was surprised at the power of his own voice; again, it carried the strength of a man’s. He fixed his attention on Dave. “You know we can’t. We don’t even have time to bring all the bodies out and—”

  “Where are we going to go?” Nikki sounded on the edge of panic. “Out there? This is our home…our protection…we can’t…we can’t…” And then she looked at the huge Gorgon craft sitting at the center of the destruction, and her remaining eye went glassy. Her knees buckled. Before she fell, Ethan reached her first and then Joel Schuster, and together they lowered her gently to the ground as she moaned and put her hands to her face. She began to cry again, and once more Olivia sat down beside her to stroke her hair and soothe her.